


Eight Minutes

by idyll



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-04-24
Updated: 2005-04-24
Packaged: 2017-10-07 11:29:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/64728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idyll/pseuds/idyll
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nothing is in Fred's control. Set between S3 and S4.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eight Minutes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inlovewithnight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/gifts).



Fred stands in the lobby of the Hyperion and presses her fingers hard against her temples. Charles and Connor are arguing. Again. She's not sure what about this time, just that it's probably a variation on the same "you need to respect us" theme that's been at the heart of Charles' difficulties with Connor.

In the beginning, Fred thought that all of Charles' experience with troubled youths would be helpful in dealing with Connor. Of course, she also thought they'd be his primary caretakers for two weeks, and it's going on three months now. So maybe she just doesn't know enough about anything to make predictions, even with math and probability and statistics on her side. Because she's been wrong about everything, really.

Charles and Connor bump heads at least twice a day. Both of them are stubborn and convinced they're each right. The arguing doesn't lead to anything being settled and put to rest, just headaches for Fred, who tries her best to mediate but has started losing patience with Charles, Connor, the situation, and everyone who's no longer here but should be.

While the boys square off by the counter in the lobby, Fred gathers up her purse, makes sure her wallet, keys and a stake are tucked inside, then quietly steps outside into the too-warm Los Angeles night.

She's not used to the humidity and she doesn't think she ever will be; Texas is a dry place and she deals better with heat that's not accompanied by air that almost chokes her when she inhales. Even with the choking sensation, Fred still feels like she's breathing a little easier once she's outside of the Hyperion and away from Charles and Connor.

In the back of her head she sometimes finds herself thinking that she didn't sign up for _this_. She signed up for helping the hopeless and fighting evil. Not babysitting a bratty teenager while trying to find Angel and Cordelia, who are the backbones of their group and would be far better suited to the current situation than she is, or pretending along with Charles that there hasn't ever been someone named Wesley in their makeshift family. It's all getting to be a little much, and she and Charles are both on edge lately. Connor's just...Connor, bratty and right and all knowing; an average adolescent with the ability to drive her up the wall, really.

To be truthful, Fred's walk-out tonight isn't entirely unplanned. She's been considering taking a night off but hasn't really gotten around to it. Maybe it might seem a little petulant doing so the way she has, but she doesn't much care. There's only so much arguing she can take before she just needs to be away from it.

But she never got as far as deciding on a destination, so she stands in the courtyard out front and bites her lip as she considers the possibilities of Los Angeles at night. Unsurprisingly, given her job, everything she's got experience with tends to include sewers and abandoned warehouses. And weaponry.

After a few moments of thinking, Fred shrugs and figures that the whole point of walking out is simply to be away and she doesn't need to have anywhere specific to go. Driving around by herself, without Charles and Connor bickering like ninnies, sounds darn near heavenly to her, in fact, so she pulls out her keys and walks to Charles' truck.

Angel's Plymouth is parked in front of it, and Fred stares at it wistfully, wanting very much to let the wind blow around her as she drives, but the convertible is "tactically unsound", as Charles puts it. Fred tends to agree with him and only drives the Plymouth during the day, when the sun's shining bright.

The radio comes on when Fred starts the truck's ignition. Classical music blares from the tinny speakers and she winces and stabs at the tuner with a vicious jab of her finger, switching to a pop station, and then lowers the volume. About the only thing Connor and Charles don't fight over is classical music. Charles seems to have become quite fond of it since that night at the ballet, and Holtz apparently educated Connor somewhat in it as well. The volume level was Fred's doing last night, since she'd take Chopin at ear-splitting levels over arguments.

For a while she drives aimlessly, her shoulders tight and tense, her fingers white-knuckled on the steering wheel, but by increments she relaxes until she's only got one hand on the wheel and is singing along with Barenaked Ladies on the radio. When the song ends and the station switches to a commercial break, Fred's mind wanders and she feels a pang of guilt for being away from the hotel and the mission and the boys and the search. But she brushes it away because she knows that Angel and Cordelia would both understand that sometimes the pressure gets to be too much and a night of not thinking is required.

When Fred sees the sign for the science center her face splits into a wide grin at the same time that she pulls a wide and highly illegal u-turn with no warning. She ignores the blaring horns and middle fingers she earns, too happy that she won't be spending her only night off in months simply driving around like a goober.

She laughs when she gets inside the science center itself because there's a laser show tonight, and she's practically bouncing in place while she stands in line with a motley group of people who all smell like her dorm room in college used to smell.

"One for _Midnight Floyd_, please," Fred chirps to the bored-looking clerk when it's her turn.

Fred sits in the middle of the large theater and leans back in the seat, bending her knees to prop her feet on the top of the seat in front of her. The rows around her are empty, with the rest of the audience clustered at the edges of the theater, hidden in shadows of shadows. She'd be nervous about everyone hiding like that, but she knows it's not supernaturally disfigured faces the audience is trying to be covert about, but pipes and bongs and joints. She knows because she used to be one of people on the edges of the theater, getting stoned off her bony butt and alternately being awed and giggling at the laser show while Pink Floyd rolled out of the speakers like something liquid and visceral.

It's not long before the lights lower and the music and lasers start. Almost immediately the almost-sweet scent of weed makes its way to Fred's nose, which twitches in response. Her head tilts towards the closest wafting thread of smoke but her eyes stay pinned to the flashing lasers because she's not that girl anymore. And there's irony in the fact that she now lives her life on the edges, but is a middle-of-the-theater person the likes of which she and her friends snickered at in undergraduate school.

But she finds that she doesn't have to be high to be fascinated by the dancing lights, the trippy music, and after a while of staring and listening she's in this zone that's comparable. This place where her head is quiet except with what's filling it from outside, and for the first time in months it's not arguments, fear or worry filling it. Just mellowness and relaxation and a randomness of thought that she's free to follow down winding, bramble-ridden paths without urgency or purpose.

Around her there are exclamations of wonder, and hints of whispered conversations that probably seem complex and layered but probably consist of revelations such as: toast is bread and bread is toast. Fred still has the science center ticket from twelfth grade that she scribbled _that_ little stoned nugget of brilliance on, and it still makes her giggle whenever she sees it.

Fred can't remember the last time she got stoned, but she can remember her last trip to the science center. It was a Saturday last month with Charles and Connor. Fred thought a family-like excursion that had nothing to do with monsters might be a good thing for them all. Charles and Connor had bickered the entire ride to the science center, but once inside the planetarium they'd both gone silent as they stared up at the _Stars Over Los Angeles_.

After the show they'd gone to one of the astronomy exhibits in the science center, and Charles and Connor had read placards, looked at models, and assaulted Fred with question after question for verification and clarification. Fred explained to Charles and Connor that when they watched a sunrise or sunset they were seeing something that happened eight minutes ago because of how long it takes light from the sun to reach the earth.

But she'd explained it absently, because she was more interested in watching the boys than in paying attention to anything else. She watched them be entranced without wanting to be, and share surprised looks at interesting tidbits of the most basic astronomy knowledge. She'd hoped that it would take, that the tranquility of it would last for the trip to the Plymouth, the ride back to the Hyperion, all the way through dinner and for every minute past that. Of course, less than ten minutes after the three of them left the science center, Charles and Connor were at it again.

The lasers start to slow down and fade at the same time the music does, and Fred blinks as the main lights come up slow and gentle so as not to blind anyone. In her peripheral vision she sees awkward and fumbling hands trying to tuck stashes and paraphernalia away in slow motion that probably seems to the hands' owners like lightning quick movements.

She wonders if maybe what she's seeing is something that happened eight minutes ago, if the hands are actually moving as the owners' think, and it's just that Fred is too far away to see everything as it's happening.

When she gets back to the Hyperion, Charles and Connor are arguing--still, again, who knows, what does it matter--and Fred watches them for a long moment that would probably only be a nanosecond if she could see things as they happen instead of after the fact. She drops her purse on the couch and walks upstairs, mumbling a goodnight that they probably already heard eight minutes ago.

.End


End file.
